EVANSTON, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Women in Evanston need to keep the tops on, for now. A proposal to do away with an ordinance concerning bare breasts remains a work in progress.
Alderman Devon Reid, who is behind the proposal, is adamant that this is not about topless beaches, as some headlines have suggested, but about equality.
He read from an opinion at a city council meeting Wednesday night that allows women to go topless in Fort Collins, Colo.
"Although the city itself never asserted for public morality as a justification for banning female toplessness. Notions of morality may well underlie its assertions that conflicts will break out, and distracted drivers will crash if it allows women to be topless in public, but such notions like the fear that topless women will endanger children originate from the sex object stereotypes of women's breasts. That stereotype does not stand up to scrutiny."
The Fort Collins case was part of the so-called Free The Nipple movement.
Corporation Counsel Julie Tappendorf said the city could defend the proposal. There are good defenses, she said, under the Illinois and U.S. Constitutions.
The matter was tabled and is expected to be back on the agenda of the city council’s Human Services Committee in August or September.
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